


Four times

by mysterytour



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, F/F, Family, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Motherhood, Mutants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:35:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterytour/pseuds/mysterytour
Summary: Four snapshots of Raven's life had Kurt known he was her son. One where he doesn't.
Relationships: Irene Adler (X-Men)/Raven | Mystique, Raven | Mystique & Kurt Wagner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Four times

**Author's Note:**

> CW for mentions of domestic abuse, child abuse, the holocaust, death, some violence.

I

Raven’s bare foot slips on something smooth. Someone has pushed an envelope under the door. She turns it over in her hands: the other side is labelled with her name in such terrible handwriting that it can only belong to Kurt. It’s been six months since she finally worked up the guts to tell him. In that time they’ve been getting to know each other and sure, there have been ups and downs, but it’s going okay. Good, even.

_Dear Raven,_

_I hope you have a nice birthday._

_Love from Kurt_

Raven sits down on the edge of the bed. She reads it again. And again. Eight-thirty in the morning and its already the best birthday she’s ever had.

There’s a knock at the door. Raven morphs a dressing gown. ‘Come in!’

Hank, carrying a tray of waffles topped with bacon and maple syrup. Raven’s favourite.

‘Happy birthday.’ Hank smiles, setting the tray down beside her.

‘Thank you. It’s nice of you to bring all this…’

‘You’re welcome. You know it’s been good having you back.’

‘It’s good to be back.’

‘May I sit?’

‘Knock yourself out.’ Hank sits, a pensive look on his face. ‘I’m sorry if this isn’t an appropriate thing to ask, but… why didn’t you come to us about Kurt?’

Raven’s mood darkens. ‘And say what? Sorry I ditched you and Charles on that beach and also I’m pregnant, it’s the sixties and you’ll never guess who the dad is?’

Hank’s mouth is a thin line. His brow, furrowed.‘We could have helped you.’

‘No, you couldn’t.’ Raven attacks the waffle with a knife and fork, ‘There’s no way I could have raised him to be the way that he is. I don’t regret it, Hank. Not one bit.’

Hank nods, curtly. ‘Do you have any plans for today?’ Raven tosses the birthday card onto his lap. Hank adjusts his glasses as he reads the note.

‘Oh Raven, this is lovely.’

‘My kid wrote the word “love” on my birthday card. Nothing else matters today.’

Hank leaves Raven to eat her breakfast in peace. Scratch that earlier thought—this is the best damn day she’s ever had. Raven’s heart is light. The weight she has felt all her life slips from her shoulders, if only until breakfast is over.

II

‘It’s okay, really. You can go.’

‘Make sure you unpack the rest of your stuff tonight. And use that recipe book Irene made for you, she put a lot of work into it.’

‘Okay, Mom.’

‘I love you, sweetie. Can I have a hug?’ That was the wrong thing to say. Kurt looks appalled. The girl he’s in the middle of talking to tries, and fails not to smirk.

‘Never mind. Don’t forget to call me.’ Kurt half-heartedly submits to a hug and resumes his conversation. He doesn’t need her any more. Raven wasn’t ready for that. She returns to the car where Irene is slurping the dregs of a Macdonald’s Diet Coke. Her biker jacket lies crumpled across the backseat. Raven gets in passenger side and sucks her lips. Irene puts the radio on and pulls out rather to aggressively into the road, as she always does.

‘Okay, sweetheart, let it out.’ Irene says, gently.

Raven bursts into tears. ‘My baby isn’t my baby any more!’

‘Come on, now.’ Irene scrolls through the stations until she gets to something good. ‘Ah, Stevie Nicks. I’ll never get tired of Stevie.’

‘He didn’t even want to say goodbye!’

‘He’s eighteen years old, he needs some space. Trust me, he’ll be calling you in tears in a week. It was like that with my kids.’

‘I remember.’ Raven dabs her eyes with a handkerchief and tries to pull herself together. The windows are open, even though the weather is brisk. Irene always has to have the windows open. ‘Do you think he’ll be okay?’

‘Because he’s blue? He’ll be fine.’

‘How can it be fine? You know what happened to me. I could hide it and it wasn’t fine.’

‘Hey, hey. Do you want me to pull over?’

‘Keep driving.’

‘Raven.’ Irene leans over and pats her knee. ‘What you gave him was a million times better than the crap hand your parents dealt you. You made it so he’ll be okay whatever he comes up against. He’s strong. And charming, which sure as shit doesn’t hurt.’

‘I’m being ridiculous.’

‘No, sweetie, you’re being a mom.’ Raven wipes the last of the tears away. Irene nods in approval. ‘Hey, did you see those kids with flyers, out front?’

‘Hare Krishnas?’

‘Evangelicals, these days.’

‘You think they’ll get him?’

‘Oh yeah, all that “I don’t know what I believe” crap—who does he think he’s fooling? He’ll be born again before you know it.’

Raven laughs and shakes her head. She’s right. She always is.

Kurt, who learned English as his mother tongue. American. Raven who nursed him, weaned him, taught him to walk and talk and endure a world that would always regard him as Other. A Raven without war, who became soft and gentle because her baby needed her to be. It was hard, especially in the beginning when she was alone and penniless. A disgrace. It was hard for Kurt, too. Raven can’t count the times she’d been told it would really be for the best if she gave him away. Didn’t he deserve a mother and a father and nice house with a big garden? If they could see him now, a straight ‘A’ student with two moms, their heads would explode.

Raven remembers that day, sitting in the Doctor’s office, hanging her head in shame. What would she say to herself? Hold you head up, kiddo, it’s worth it. It’s all worth it.

III

‘Of course I’ll help you, Raven, I’m always here for you.’ — Charles.

‘Mutants look out for one another. No harm will come to you, or your child.’ — Erik.

Yet harm comes, still. Raven raises him on the school grounds and enrols him when he gets to school age. After all, he should be around his own kind. After all, Kurt couldn’t hope to pass as human and children are so unkind. He grows up happy and loved. Confident and comfortable in his own skin.

As soon as he’s old enough, he learns to fight.

As soon as he’s old enough to die.

‘Raven please, sit down, I have the most terrible news.’ Charles’ face conveys death. Raven refuses to sit as he explains what happened. She refuses to sit as Peter tries to make sense of it:

‘Erik fell off the map…we just went to check it out and...they were in the woods, Nina… we were unarmed. Why did they… Why did I take him with me? He was just a kid...is this what the X-Men is?’ Raven’s mind reels. The office walls, the plush carpet under her feet are a remote horizon as she struggles to grasp at the unthinkable. The truth is slippery, water flowing through her hands.

‘Why, Charles? If Erik couldn’t handle it why did you send a child?’ Raven’s scales make waves across her skin, red and black, fire and smoke.

‘I made a mistake, I didn’t know.’ Charles’ voice is barely a whisper. He even has the nerve to cry. ‘Raven, forgive me, I—’

‘You want forgiveness?’

‘I… I know I don’t deserve…’

Raven has to get out. She can’t afford to let go in there, not with kids around. She walks out and keeps walking until she can walk no more.

En Sabah Nur has use for her rage and the emptiness that follows. He fills her with his intent until it becomes her own and no one, not even Jean Grey can stop her.

IV

‘Because we shouldn’t have to.’ He’s with the X-Men when she meets him for the first time, timid and ashamed of who he is. Raven puts the fact that he is her sone out of her mind. She made her choice. The Brotherhood and X-Men part ways and Kurt presumably goes back to his life. Raven fully expects never to see him again.

Humans will never allow mutants to live in peace. Raven learned it on the streets and Erik learned it in a concentration camp. They had only each other. Raven gave her life to Erik’s work because she believed he was right and they were protecting their own kind. She did many terrible things under his instruction, so many that they stopped feeling bad and started to feel good, and in return he left her naked and stripped of her abilities on a cold, metal floor. Raven talked because his abandonment showed her that he wasn’t acting for the benefit of mutantkind anymore, but for himself.

Raven is housed with humans. Obviously, she isn’t a mutant any more. Raven earns cred from her reputation, at first. Later, she earns it smuggling in drugs and cigarettes. This is what she has become. This is what it all was for.

In prison there is nothing but time to think, so Raven thinks about the past, which inevitably leads to thinking about him. There was no way she could have worked with a baby in tow. Besides, what did she know about parenting when she hadn’t been parented herself? She had no maternal instinct. She hated the way pregnancy had warped her body out of shape, the way the foetus swelled inside her like a cancer. If Raven allowed herself to feel shame, she would be ashamed to say that she felt nothing when he was born, nor when he was taken away. The nothingness swelled inside like a second pregnancy.

When the other women on her wing ask if she has a kid on the outside, she tells them her truth. In return, they tell her their own. Who is he with, is he safe? Thank god, mine’s with his dad he smashes things up when he’s had too much to drink he doesn’t like me talking to my sisters this one time he smashed grandma’s jewellery box to pieces. Mine’s grown up too haven’t talked in years I made some mistakes I wish I could help him he’s got no money for his depression meds. God, how the women in here have suffered. Raven can’t stand to be around them, even though she has suffered, too.

Pyro keeps in touch. He finds out Kurt’s address (he and Logan have a flat in New York) so she can send him a letter, but Raven doesn’t know what to write, so Pyro takes her address on a scrap of paper and makes up some words for her. Raven doesn’t expect a response. She didn’t raise him and Charles will have told him all about the things she’s done.

But then comes the response. ‘He wants to know you and some Jesus shit or whatever.’ Pyro tells her over a burner phone. ‘I didn’t think it was right, what he did. Me and Magneto, we’re not on the same page.’

Raven takes the information and tells him if he’s too weak to stand up to Erik then he has no place in the Brotherhood. He doesn’t contact her again.

Kurt visits her once in prison. Raven screws that up as well.

V

Raven always has a bag packed so she’s ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Not in preparation for the end of the world, although it’s certainly a possibility in her line of work, but for the inevitable betrayal. You can’t rely on anyone in this world; not your family and certainly not your friends. No matter what happens, she holds on to the memory of herself as a starving little girl rooting through bins, so when it finally comes she’s ready for it and no one can hurt her ever again.

It occurs to her in her final moments that it was this line of thinking that led her to give up her little boy. Whatever future they might have had together, no matter how difficult or painful or wonderful it might have been, was snubbed out when she brought him into that little rundown caravan with a creepy picture of Jesus on the wall. She never had the guts to tell him. What good would it have done? Raven never let herself get close to him or told him the truth, and so she dies not as a mother, but a colleague. He’ll be as sorry as anyone and no more. Isn’t that a good thing?

The satchel waits patiently in its hiding place while Raven bleeds out elsewhere, only a little surprised that the perpetrator is one of her own.


End file.
